The development of computerized information resources, such as the "Internet," allows users to link with servers and networks, and thus retrieve vast amounts of electronic information heretofore unavailable in an electronic medium. Such electronic information increasingly is displacing more conventional means of information transmission, such as newspapers, magazines, and even television. The term "Internet" is an abbreviation for "Internetwork," and refers commonly to a collection of computer networks that utilize the TCP/IP suite of protocols, well-known in the art of computer networking. TCP/IP is an acronym for "Transport Control Protocol/Interface Program," a software protocol developed by the Department of Defense for communication between computers.
Electronic information transferred between computer networks (e.g., the Internet) can be presented to a user in hypertext, a metaphor for presenting information in a manner in which text, images, sounds, and actions become linked together in a complex non-sequential Web of association that permit the user to "browse" through related topics, regardless of the presented order of the topics. These links are often established by both the author of a hypertext document and by the user, depending on the intent of the hypertext document. For example, traveling among links to the word "iron" in an article displayed within a graphical user interface in a computer system might lead the user to the periodic table of the chemical elements (i.e., linked by the word "iron"), or to a reference to the use of iron in weapons in Europe in the Dark Ages. The term "hypertext" is utilized to describe documents, as presented by a computer, that express the nonlinear structure of ideas, as opposed to the linear format of books, film, and speech.
Hypertext, especially in an interactive format where choices are controlled by the user, is structured around the idea of offering a working and learning environment that parallels human thinking--that is, an environment that allows the user to make associations between topics rather than moving sequentially from one topic to the next, as in an alphabetic list. Hypertext topics are linked in a manner that allows users to jump from one subject to other related subjects during a search for information.
Networked systems utilized hypertext conventions typically follow a client/server architecture. A "client" is a member of a class or group that utilizes the services of another class or group to which it is not related. In the context of a computer network such as the Internet, a client is a process (i.e., roughly a program or task) that requests a service provided by another program. The client process utilizes the requested service without having to "know" any working details about the other program or the service itself. In networked systems, a client is usually a computer that accesses shared network resources provided by another computer (i.e., a server).
A "server" is typically a remote computer system accessible over a communications medium such as the Internet. The server scans and searches for raw (e.g., unprocessed) information sources (e.g., newswire feeds or newsgroups). Based upon such requests by the user, the server presents filtered electronic information to the user as server responses to the client process. The client process may be active in a first computer system, and the server process may be active in a second computer system, and the client and server processes may communicate with one another over a communications medium that allows multiple clients to take advantage of the information-gathering capabilities of the server.
Client and server can communicate with one another utilizing the functionality provided by a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The World Wide Web (WWW) or, simply, the "Web," includes all servers adhering to this protocol, which are accessible to clients via a Universal Resource Locator (URL). Internet services can be accessed by specifying Universal Resource Locators that have two basic components: a protocol to be used and an object pathname. For example, the Universal Resource Locator address, "http://www.uspto.gov" (i.e., home page for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), specifies a hypertext transfer protocol ("http") and a pathname of the server ("www.uspto.gov"). The server name is associated with a unique numeric value (TCP/IP address). Active within the client is a first process, known as a "browser," that established the connection with the server and presents information to the user. The server itself executes corresponding server software that presents information to the client in the form of HTTP responses. The HTTP responses correspond to "Web pages" constructed from a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), or other server-generated data.
A "Web page" (also referred to by some designers simply as a "page") is a data file written in a hyper-text language that may have text, graphic images, and even multimedia objects such as sound recordings or moving video clips associated with that data file. The Web page can be displayed as a viewable object within a computer system. A viewable object can contain one or more components such as spreadsheets, text, hotlinks, pictures, sound, and video objects. A Web page can be constucted by loading one or more separate files into an active directory or file structure that is then displayed as a viewable object within a graphical user interface.
When a client workstation sends a request to a server for a Web page, the server first transmits (at least partially) the main hypertext file associated with the page, and then loads, either sequentially or simultaneously, the other files associated with the page. A given file may be transmitted as several separate pieces via TCP/IP protocol. The constructed page is then displayed as a viewable object on the workstation monitor. A page may be "larger" than the physical size of the monitor screen, and devices such as graphical user interface scroll bars can be utilized by the viewing software (i.e., the browser) to view different portions of the page.
Browsers typically incorporate or rely upon some form of an Internet search engine that allows users to perform an Internet search. Such a search engine can return an index page of hypertext links (also referred to simply as "links") to other Web pages in response to user-provided search criteria. The search criteria is typically provided to the search engine by the user in the form of keywords. For example, a user who desires to search the Internet on the topic of "kidney transplants" might input to the search engine keywords (i.e., search criteria) such as "medical," "surgery," "transplant," "kidneys," and "organs." The search engine would then return an index page containing numerous hypertext links related, at least in general, to the topic of "kidney transplants."
A problem associated with this type of Internet search is that, when a user explores a link from the index page, the user can potentially end up several pages deep in a hierarchy of Web pages. In order to return to the index page, the user must manually back up through all the intermediate pages or search through a history list provided by the browser. Manually backing up through intermediate pages in this manner or searching through such a history list is a time-consuming process that can potentially lead to errors. For example, the user might accidentally access an unwanted link while searching through a history list.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that a need exists for a method and system that allow a user to obtain index page information without having to manually back up through each Web page included in the hierarchy of Web pages. A mechanism that solves this problem would allow a user to save time and energy in retrieving a Web site accessed earlier during an Internet search session.